PS OL ee oe A Pe ee ee maith en SE ey 7 eS Ee OL Oe”) ey See ee ee a ae) ee 
: . . * ¢ pata ee ed 
52 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
brief way indicated a few things that are imperatively nec- 
essary for a successful market gardener to know. Do you 
ask, What will be the result if we follow out the rules you 
have laid down for us? Well, you will not, even with all 
the advantages I have named, ever become a millionaire. 
They are never found among market gardeners. On the 
other hand, a good, level-headed, intelligent, industrious 
and persevering man will seldom fail to win at least a 
moderate fortune; and there are a good many of them in 
the country who are worth many tens of thousands each. 
As for myself, Jay Gould or Vanderbilt would no doubt 
call me very poor; still, wife and I do not feel so. It is 
nearly one-third of a century since we commenced our 
present business, though for several years in a very small 
way. The business has grown, and we have grown with it. 
We have passed through many changes, some very dis- 
couraging, some quite otherwise. We have given the best 
efforts we were capable of, to our work, and its results 
have been reasonably satisfactory. Our seven sons have 
been our best helpers and have all grown up with habits of 
industry, temperance and economy. Six of them are 
following the same business as ourselves, and are doing 
well, and the seventh is also a cultivator of the soil, and 
will, we trust, do well, as he is upright, honorable and 
intelligent. I do not know of any other business in which 
wife and I could have been happier, and perhaps in no other 
could we have been more useful in the community gen- 
erally, than in that of market gardeners. 
The Chairman: *‘I do hold it in the royal ordering of 
gardens,” says Lord Bacon, ‘‘ there ought to be gardens 
for all the months in the year, in which, severally, things 
of beauty may be then in season.’’ Under a perpetually 
shining sun, and in a climate untouched by frost, such a 
garden would be the ideal surrounding for a rural home. 
The climate of our Mississippi Valley, while it is far from 
being the worst conceivable, does not permit us to realize 
